Is something which occurred in the past important?
What can the study of history do for us in the present? As the Roman statesman
and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero warned centuries ago, “To be ignorant of what
occurred before you were born is to remain always child.” Why is history
important? History is important because God is ultimately the creator of all
things and in him we live and move and have our being. The Bible declares that
history is important, “called to remember the former days” “remember the days
of old” “consider the generations long past.”
I love history and I want to clear up a few misconceptions
about Christian history and the Church’s history. It is amazing the amount of
misinformation, lies, half-truth’s and myths which exist in history and
especially what is called Church or Christian history. Protestant Christianity
largely believes in sola scriptura which in Latin means “Scripture alone.” Not
tradition, not what one Church currently believes but what the Bible says about
the Bible. That isn’t to say that we believe in solo scriptura “by scripture
alone.” That is completely against Biblical teaching because we cannot live our
lives simply by reading the Bible alone, for instance when there is a speed
limit sign on the road we can’t say that just because it isn’t in the Bible
doesn’t mean that that we can go against it. The Bible speaks about obeying the
government but it also speaks about not obeying the government when the
government tells you to round up Jewish people such as happened in the Third
Reich. Therefore we should be like the Berean’s who “examined the Scriptures
daily” for they did it to make sure that what the apostle Paul taught wasn’t contrary
to what God had spoken about in the Old Testament but in the context of
history, we should do it to seek out the truth whatever it may be and live by
the truth even if it may be uncomfortable. As Jesus said “the truth will set
you free.” Women were among the largest population of the early Christian group
because in those days women were seen as not equal to men but Christians saw
woman as equal. In our study of history, we will examine four big lies labeled
against Christianity: The Bible is intolerant and hateful, The Crusades were a
dark spot on Christianity, The Church prevented science and freedom (The Dark
Ages), the Church has been mostly intolerant and hateful (Spanish Inquisition).
Big
lie #1 The Bible is intolerant and hateful
First off, these lies are so complex that I could
expand the explanations into the hundreds of pages but in order to just relay a
few, I will try and keep it short.
Today many believe the
Church (those who are to be saved) and the Bible is intolerant but what is the
Church? The Church is the body of Christ. What is the body of Christ? The body
of Christ is each individual in the local church and the universal church as a
whole—Each Christian is in a very real sense is like a human body part. Some of
us use our mouths to teach and preach. Some of us specialize in using our hands
to give and serve others and others use their legs to serve in some way. We
each need each other—for how can the mouth say go and do this while we have no
hands or legs? So what does the Church believe? It depends on the church but
all Christians who are to be saved go to heaven believe in the
teachings of God which are contained in the Bible alone. Therefore what the
Church believes and what is the only inerrant source of information in the
world is contained in the Bible.
“The Bible is intolerant towards women, gays,
etc.” This is a legitimate argument to those who have not read the Bible and
don’t compare all of Scripture together. The Bible is made up of 66 books and
therefore it is easy for many people who don’t know the Bible to take a verse
out of context. However to those who know the Bible, the only thing the Bible
is intolerant of is “sin.” Sin literally means “missing the mark” and we all
miss the mark of being pleasing to God. Sin is disgusting in God’s sight,
because unlike us God has never done anything detestable, He has never
dishonored Himself, He has never murdered, and He has never coveted. God is
Holy and a perfect Judge. God does not lack anything and there is nothing
materially we could give Him that He would ever want. The Bible says that God
hates those who are serial liars, slanders and those who are quick to run to
evil yet it also says that God is long suffering, giving grace to those who do
not deserve it and not wanting any to perish (go to Hell) but all to repent and
trust in Him. So yes in a sense the Bible is “intolerant” but it is only
intolerant of what is evil… seems reasonable to me. Does God hate
homosexuality? Jesus said that what you are comes out of your heart and that
nothing good dwells in us. So does God hate homosexuality? God hates all sin
and when we go against what He made us for, “man and woman” we sin. It is
irrelevant what the sin is, we all sin and fall short of God and all our trying
to please God in doing good things is like dirty rags in the eyes of a perfect
and Holy God. So God hates all sin and what we are is sinners. But doesn’t God
love us? Yes He does but He also hates what we are; which are sinners and no
sin can ever enter heaven. God can only accept perfect people into heaven and
their was only one who in history which we know was perfect.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever
believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16
We all recognize this verse but
maybe we would understand the gravity of this verse if we made it personal.
For God so Loved You that he gave his only Son for you, that if you
will believe in him, you will not
be condemned to a just judgment but
have everlasting life. But God shows his love
for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
Big
lie #2 The Crusades were a dark spot on Christianity
“The
Crusades (1095-1291) were a series of European Christian campaigns into the
Middle East, fought during the middle ages. They were the military responses
made by Christians from Western Europe to the Pope's pleas to re-capture the
Holy Land from Islamic influence.” This
is perhaps the most misunderstood event in Christian history besides the
Spanish Inquisition. Most histories of the Crusades start during the speech “Pope
Urban II called upon the knights of Christendom to fight for the defense of the
Christian East and the protection of pilgrims who visited the Holy land, in a
speech made at the Council of Clermont on November 27, 1095.” Yet this is
unfair because it fails to take into account what happened prior to the Pope’s
call—especially what had happened for the past 400 years beforehand.
It all started one night during the
final part of Ramadan, the ninth month of the lunar year, around the year 610
A.D. Muhammad ibn Abdallah, a forty-year old merchant from the town of Mecca.
Muhammad and his supposed call from allah “god” started him and his followers
off as a peaceful group among the largely Christian Middle East but soon he
started raiding caravans and taking over small cities and it wasn’t long until
his raids became full scale wars between
Christians, Jews and all those who didn’t agree with Muhammad. Muhammad
gradually became more and more blood thirsty and became quick to shed the blood
of his enemies and had little mercy for particularly Jews and Christians. Egypt
and Northern Africa used to be home to a large population of Christians but
once Islamic armies had captured large portions of the Middle East, they turned
northwest, northeast and southwestern and swept across northern Africa. They
were stopped at the gates of the Eastern Empire of Christianity
(Constantinople) and in northern France. The Spanish fought against the Muslim
armies for centuries after they first swept across Spain. Within 150 years of
the birth of Muhammad and his religion, Islam had conquered most of the world.
They had almost taken over all of Europe. If they hadn’t been stopped in France
and modern day Turkey, we would all be speaking in Arabic today and praying
towards Mecca five times a day.
This is one of the
primary reasons for the Crusades. It is often believed that Christians went to
the Holy Land to become rich but this is preposterous since you would basically
have to be either extremely wealthy or go bankrupt and then take out loans from
your relatives to even go there, since it wasn’t a short journey. If Christians
wanted to get rich quick, they could have made war against Muslims in Spain,
since Spain was a very wealthy. Their were many reasons which Christians
decided to go but one of the most important was to defend the Holy Land where Jesus
Christ had walked and many had wanted to go because they thought that it was a
form of repentance for their sins. With such a vast group of Christian armies
(since there were tons of different groups which made up armies) which made
their way to the Holy Land, some did commit horrible acts, especially the small
group of peasants which murdered Jews on their journey to the Holy Land, yet
these were quickly rounded up and condemned for their atrocities. The Crusades
were more complicated than most people think and were not without atrocities
but neither can they be labeled as an unjustified war.
Big
lie #3 The Church prevented science and freedom
(The Dark Ages)
Contrary to what most people think, the Church
didn’t prevent science but it actually invented it. Christians prior to and
during the Scientific Revolution were influenced by those during the “Dark
Ages.” The "Dark Ages" is a term used for the period between the fall
of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. “Recent historical research has
debunked the idea of a "Dark Ages" after the "fall" of
Rome. In fact, this was an era of profound and rapid technological progress, by
the end of which Europe had surpassed the rest of the world. Moreover, the
so-called "Scientific Revolution" of the sixteenth century was a
result of developments begun by religious scholars starting in the eleventh
century.” It is believed that after the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe fell
into darkness but the opposite is the case. After Rome fell, Europe separated
into hundreds of independent “statelets” and ushered in the rise of technology,
art, culture and freedom. At the end of the Roman Empire, there was extensive
slavery throughout Europe but by the time of the “Renaissance” it was long
gone. Romans preferred to use manual slave labor and made little use of water
or wind power. Yet by the 12th century, Europe had become so crowded
with windmills that owners began filing lawsuits against each other for
blocking their wind. Agriculture was also revolutionized with horses instead of
oxen cultivating fields and selective plant breeding beginning in the
monasteries. Chimneys and eyeglasses were invented.
Heavy cavalry were introduced and maintained only by
Christian Europe and helped stop the Muslim conquest of France in 732 and it
also helped the Crusaders along with the crossbow. While gunpowder was not
invented in the West, the West was the first to use it in warfare. Within a
decade of gunpowder arriving from China (which mostly used it for fireworks),
Europe had started constructing sailing ships armed with cannons. Capitalism is
thought to have started in the Protestant Reformation but it actually started
in the “Dark Ages.” Large monastic estates developed into well-organized free
markets. With the birth of Capitalism, it brought great economic success and by
the thirteenth century leading Christian theologians had fully debated the
primary aspects of emerging capitalism—profits, property rights, credit,
lending and the like. All classical societies were slave societies, even the
Northwest America Indian tribes had slaves long before Columbus arrived but there
was only one civilization which has ever rejected human bondage: Christendom.
And it did it twice! Slavery was first eliminated in the “Dark Ages” by the
Church, which echoed the call of the apostle Paul in declaring that all men
were equal, whether slave or free, but in all things and always there is only
Christ. Music, art, literature and education were all revolutionized by
Christian Europe in the “Dark Ages.” The greatest myth of all is that of the
“renaissance.” Had there really been a rebirth of classical knowledge, it would
have been an era of cultural decline, since Christian Europe had long since
surpassed classical antiquity in almost every way. In essence, what we now
understand as modern-day freedom largely originated in Christian Europe during
the “Dark Ages.”
Big
lie #4 The Church has been mostly intolerant
and hateful
When I say the Church capitalized, I mean the
universal Church of the ruling and reigning Lord Jesus Christ. We can look at
specific events throughout history and see hatred or intolerance from those who
claimed to be a part of the “church” and any form of such things is a horrible.
However just because there are false converts throughout Christianity’s 2000
year existence, doesn’t mean that real Christians don’t exist. Take for
instance, the Spanish Inquisition. The shocking truth about that is almost
everything that has been claimed about it is an outright exaggeration and lie.
It was propagated by the English and Dutch in the Sixteenth century, while they
were at war with Spain. In all but 2% of the cases did inquisitors ever use torture.
Church law, limited torture to one session lasting no more than fifteen minutes
and there could be no danger to life or limb. Nor could blood be shed! Even with
these rules it is possible to have very painful techniques. However we must
remember that Europe was plagued with intolerance and hatred of changing the
status quo with the Reformation in full swing and it was far worse in other
areas besides Spain… so much so that those who were imprisoned tried to transfer to
the inquisition’s prisons.
Even one death from hatred and intolerance is far
too many. There will always be those who think they are doing good by not
tolerating something or hating someone and they like wolves in sheep’s clothing
sometimes gain a lot of power, even in governments, yet the only real force
which has ever stopped slavery, war, hatred, intolerance and promoted freedom
has always been followers of Jesus Christ.
References
The Triumph of Christianity by
Rodney Stark
Drive Thru History: with Dave
Stott’s
The Reformation Study Bible ESV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze0shXucArA&list=PL47671000BED9EAE2&index=31&feature=plpp_video
– The Authenticity of the Bible – Josh McDowell
http://www.conservapedia.com/Crusades
- The Crusades
God’s Battalions by Rodney Stark
Islamic Imperialism: A history by Efriam Karsh
